They Shoot Bears, Don’t They?

“Police at Western Carolina University and wildlife officials were investigating the discovery early Monday of a dead bear cub draped with a pair of Barack Obama campaign signs. Leila Tvedt, associate vice chancellor for public relations, said Monday night that maintenance workers found the 75-pound bear cub shot to death in front of the school’s administration building at the entrance to campus. The Obama yard signs were stapled together and placed over the bear’s head, Tvedt said. The bear had been shot in the head, Tvedt said.”

“Twenty-two feet from his home, he shot a grizzly that measured about 8 feet from nose to tail, [Kurt] Sorensen said. Standing on its hind legs, it would have towered around 10 feet…To shoot such a bear, legally, in one’s backyard is unheard of. Fish and Game biologists have never encountered a hunt like this before, a hunt in which a man used his home as a blind from which to shoot a bear he let come almost within spitting distance. At that range, all it took was one shot from a powerful, .45-70-caliber rifle to put the bear down.”